tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post2549909964189143385..comments2024-02-18T18:59:06.164+00:00Comments on Econosophy and other musings: Modern Monetary Theory: shiny, new and good? Part IITobyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16258136994278139356noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post-74835233843180248912018-05-13T05:28:00.046+00:002018-05-13T05:28:00.046+00:00Hello Everybody,
My name is Mrs Sharon Sim. I live...Hello Everybody,<br />My name is Mrs Sharon Sim. I live in Singapore and i am a happy woman today? and i told my self that any lender that rescue my family from our poor situation, i will refer any person that is looking for loan to him, he gave me happiness to me and my family, i was in need of a loan of S$250,000.00 to start my life all over as i am a single mother with 3 kids I met this honest and GOD fearing man loan lender that help me with a loan of S$250,000.00 SG. Dollar, he is a GOD fearing man, if you are in need of loan and you will pay back the loan please contact him tell him that is Mrs Sharon, that refer you to him. contact Dr Purva Pius,via email:(urgentloan22@gmail.com) Thank you.Mrs Sharon Simhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03219645160084338174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post-86684472581077209352010-05-03T12:44:33.411+00:002010-05-03T12:44:33.411+00:00I don't believe that money=wealth, only that i...I don't believe that money=wealth, only that it was useful in the discussion to hold that equation for a few moments. All money is fiat, in my opinion, whether paper or gold or beads or tally sticks etc. Nothing has intrinsic value, as I have argued elsewhere. It's all about consensus in the end, which tends to come at a high price, probably proportional to the number of people who have to sign up to it. To bring the population of the world to a new consensus will mostly likely take an almighty amount of bloodshed. Hence MMT. It's just a whisker away from where we are now, though at quite a distance when viewed culturally.<br /><br />Bill Mitchell's observations about gov as distinct from persons are functional within the system. As the creator of the currency, gov does not have to "go into debt" to create lubrication for the economy when it sees fit. Money is a lubricant, not a store of value. Debt becomes a tool for controlling interest rates, not a cast iron necessity. That gov is populated with humans is a very important point, one I repeatedly make when discussing corruption, but the advantage of MMT is the freeing of gov from the lobbying power of credit institutions and other money interests. This gives gov a better chance to operate in a less corrupt and hopefully wiser manner. It certainly can't get much worse than now!<br /><br />MMT does not seek to demonize credit, only to set it on a different level of the economic system (see diagram). I am only against a credit-only or debt-only money, because such can only be a ponzi-like system doomed to catastrophic failure. Again, all money is fiat. There is no intrinsic value. It's all in the way we bring money into existence, and then how we run the economy.<br /><br />As to wealth, in my view we need a global debate about that, and about value, as important underpinnings of human life. And yes, we cannot measure everything, far from it. I hope for a situation/system though, in which we can talk about and inspire a desire for the growth of profits in trust, literacy, societal and ecological health etc., and not just monetary profits. The value of monetary profits rest entirely on the health of those less material things. Otherwise it's just so many numbers swirling around so much suffering.Tobyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16258136994278139356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post-63465618848127816742010-05-03T08:05:42.378+00:002010-05-03T08:05:42.378+00:00For the Bill Mitchell quotes...
I'm not sure I...For the Bill Mitchell quotes...<br />I'm not sure I'm understanding Bill correctly, but.. IF I AM..<br />Bill seems to be implying that government debt is NOT THE SAME THING, or does not have the same nature as individual debt. Logical. The government is NOT an individual, is it ?<br />But Bill is indulging in the wishful thinking of lots of people of a scientific bent who look at the world and distractedly brush away that thorny problem of HUMAN NATURE, AND PSYCHOLOGY as a variable that irritates them, and that they wish would just go away. Bill seems to me to be VERY DISCONNECTED from what makes us tick here...<br />No, the government is NOT an individual, and government debt should not be treated like individual debt, BUT...<br />WHY then, are we ASSUMING that the economic "laws" (?!!!) that apply to private sector debt must also apply to public sector ?<br />We are assuming it because... we have bankrupted the government's legitimacy IN OUR OWN EYES in the ultimate, logical, conclusion of (neo)liberal ideology : the be-all and end-all is the INDIVIDUAL.<br />The logical end of the (neo)liberal ideology is an ungovernable atomization of individuals outside of ANY collective that federates them.<br />We have shifted our allegiance, and OUR perception of where power and legitimacy are, from our (public) national governments to multinational PRIVATE companies. By bottoming out taxation in our minds, we have delegitamized and discredited our national governments. And made THEM our taskmaskers instead of US, their citizenry...<br />So... we are THERE, right now, my friends, and it is NO coincidence whatsoever that fiat money is in a bad way. Because... trust LINKS us to other individuals, in the collective, IN SOCIETY. <br />On our consumerist society... we are not consuming as much as we are TOLD we are consuming.<br />But... we sure as hell are WASTING a lot.<br />One last point that we need to take out, and look at :<br />The role of gratuity in our society.<br />It is VERY important.<br />What REMAINS OUTSIDE monetary exchange, but nevertheless keeps the system (society) afloat.<br />Let's try to avoid the folly of measuring it...Debrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01510189619803992336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post-65844416114965886622010-05-03T07:46:43.034+00:002010-05-03T07:46:43.034+00:00Some comments on your piece, Toby.
I remember read...Some comments on your piece, Toby.<br />I remember reading the somewhat cynical hype in our junior high textbooks about the fact that the Indians VALUED glass beads more than the gold that the Europeans were ready to kill for during colonization.<br />What was neglected was that... the glass beads were from Murano, where glass blowing has been an art for centuries now, and persists..<br />Wealth=money in a fiat economy ?<br />Wealth is OBJECTIVELY MEASURED through money in OUR industrial economy. Fiat or not is incidental. The issue of fiat is elsewhere.<br />But... the question is... can ALL wealth be objectively measured through money, or is there wealth that cannot be reduced to quantification, and thus measured ?<br />And money ? Do we.. BELIEVE in it ? The idea behind fiat money IS that we believe... WHAT do we believe in ? Do we believe in THE MONEY, or do we TRUST the person/entity who is issuing it, and WHAT ARE WE BASING OUR TRUST ON ?<br />A big question, Toby...<br />Look at the MATERIALIZED fiat money that we exchange when we don't resort to a credit card.<br />ON IT YOU WILL SEE (in the U.S....) "In God we trust"....<br />That little saying is there for a reason.<br />Because, when we resort to FIAT, we need a symbolic GARANT. Somebody (?) who will guarantee our trust. That is the symbolic PURPOSE of "In God we trust" on our currency.<br />The PHYSICAL currency materializes money in a way that the current debt debacle DOES NOT, and this is a problem. We NEED our money materialized in order for it to... BE WORTH something to us, and for it to HAVE VALUE, and MEAN something for us.<br />I see at work in some of these assumptions the idea that economic activity, and creation of wealth can ONLY be finite, and not infinite. Think assumptions of abundance, not penury. <br />Again, this depends on our definition of wealth. <br />There is no need to diabolize credit, I think, and certainly no need to assert that ONLY the government should be creating money. That is giving too much power to the government, and I think that government's OTHER mandates in our minds (security...) INEVITABLY make it a repressive instance.<br />(continued)Debrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01510189619803992336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post-53220497391460824442010-05-02T06:56:22.908+00:002010-05-02T06:56:22.908+00:00Thanks for stopping by Greg,
my take is that mone...Thanks for stopping by Greg,<br /><br />my take is that money is a representation of wealth, not wealth itself, regardless of what form that money takes. It only has utility value when there are all sorts of other things in place to make it useful, like an agreement that it is a medium of exchange, the infrastructure necessary for economic activity, and a healthy ecosystem capable of supporting economic activity, plus — and this might seem weird — the <i>need</i>, because of the presumption of scarcity, to have a medium of exchange in the first place (there have been exceptions to this in human history). I further believe that <i>nothing</i> has intrinsic value, and that applies to gold too. So yes, bridges and highways dumped on cavemen would likewise have no value. All such things require other conditions to be in place for them to have value. All in all I don't believe there is such a thing as intrinsic value, ever, and believing there is, as economics seems to do, leads to erroneous positions deeper in one's theory.<br /><br />Nice to have you here.<br /><br />TobyTobyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16258136994278139356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post-68010798343556500852010-05-01T20:55:11.028+00:002010-05-01T20:55:11.028+00:00Hey Toby,
Welcome to the MMT community. I found i...Hey Toby,<br /><br />Welcome to the MMT community. I found it in September and havent gone a day without checking out Bills, Warrens or the UMKC blog site. Fascinating stuff. <br />Good to se ol Tom Hickey commenting over here. He is someone who will add a lot. He frequents Warrens and Bills sites as well.<br /><br />I just want to comment on something you said in your first post on MMT. It was fairly innocuous and probably seemed unassailable you said......."Money is not wealth"<br />Money is wealth if not in the form of a credit. With cash money I can acquire that amounts worth of stuff. I have a certain percentage of the claims to goods. <br />I have heard this a lot though and until recently have never questioned it. You talked about going back and dropping a trillion dollars on the cavemen and how useless that would be. So would dropping four tons of gold on them. They might be enamored by the color/shine but it would not be wealth to them. So would dropping a completed highway system on them. Maybe a more accurate phrase would be "high price is not wealth" I thought of this when talking to a buddy at work about the stock market. Trying to convince him he's not wealthy because the Dow is up. I simply told him that the price was high. I could put a price of 1,000,000 on my house but it would not make me wealthy. We too often get price and value mixed up and they are driven by different things.<br /><br />Great site here Ill be coming backGreghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03139782404004492965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7378568575885387942.post-29732360620833179712010-05-01T06:01:29.494+00:002010-05-01T06:01:29.494+00:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Rupe0705rtJ_Brobsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14296349220463392693noreply@blogger.com